Kingfisher Louvres – our year in review
From design development to delivery, Kingfisher Louvres supports specifiers and contractors on projects that span the commercial and public sectors including education, healthcare and hospitality. This year we’ve played our part in some impressive projects, supplying bespoke products manufactured in-house to the highest standards at our UK manufacturing base in Nottinghamshire. Here’s a whistle-stop tour of our favourite projects completed over the last 12 months.
Daphne Steele Building at the University of Huddersfield
The first university building to be designed to WELL Platinum Standard, it’s also the first of seven new buildings which will form the university’s new National Health Innovation Campus – an exciting project to help improve health outcomes and lead innovation in healthcare for the North of England.
The project was delivered by main contractor BAM, designed by AHR Architects with Cundall providing multi-disciplinary engineering services with sustainable design solutions. We supplied our KW100Z weather louvres and KC120 screening louvres via Certa Roofing and Cladding who installed a continuous louvre system to both the high-level plantroom screen and the ground floor, as well as the fourth and seventh floors.
The Dame Clare Marx Building, Colchester Hospital
Home to the Essex & Suffolk Elective Orthopaedic Centre, this landmark new BREEAM Excellent rated building is a four-storey modular development delivered by MTX as the main contractor. The £64 million building features eight operating theatres, three wards and 72 inpatient beds. As construction took place on a live hospital site separate from the main building, all deliveries had to pass through an active hospital campus which required them to be scheduled outside peak periods to minimise disruption.
Our architectural louvres, which were installed by Eden Facades, were specified for the third-floor plant rooms. We designed them to integrate seamlessly with the aluminium cladding which was fabricated to align perfectly with the louvre blades. The effect is that when you look at the elevation it appears to be entirely composed of louvres.
Southfields Veterinary Specialists in Basildon
As one of the largest and most diverse small animal referral hospitals in Europe, Southfields Veterinary Specialists offer services across 13 highly specialised fields of pet treatment, each with its own dedicated team.
For this project we supplied over 2,500m of our KW100Z blade and louvred doors with panic furniture for the ventilation and screening of the plant room, sub-station and LINAC (Radiotherapy) building. The louvres were supplied in three different matt colours, RAL 7022, 7035 and 7038, and installed by our customer Eden Facades.
1 Hotel, One Berkeley Street Mayfair
This major mixed-use award-winning scheme features a luxury hotel directly opposite The Ritz in the heart of London’s Mayfair conservation area.
Working in partnership with main contractor DE Group Contracting and Allford Hall Monaghan Morris architects, our team developed a louvre solution that would effectively screen rooftop plant equipment whilst also providing the necessary acoustic performance to minimise noise from HVAC systems.
We supplied more than 600 KA acoustic louvre modules to meet the varying sound attenuation needs across the roofscape and over 1,600 metres of screening louvre blade – a combination of KA150/20 and KA270/20 in a RAL 7047 matt finish. Bespoke penetrations were also required through some of the acoustic louvres to allow for a man-safe support system which meant that each penetration needed a specially designed unit.
The Belfry Hotel & Resort, Sutton Coldfield
As part of the hotel’s £80 million BREEAM Excellent rated redevelopment, we supported façade contractor ALD Group with a bespoke screening louvre solution for the ballroom and conference suite tailored to the venue’s exacting standards.
Our technical sales team and design engineers collaborated closely with ALD to provide specialist product guidance in the early design and procurement stages. We supplied KC120 screening louvres in RAL 9005 Jet Black to discreetly shield plant equipment, along with four custom KW30Z flanged frames designed to complement the architectural character of the existing building while meeting new sustainability targets.
Proud to support the 2025 Façade Awards
To finish off a superb year we were delighted, and extremely proud, to see our Commercial Operations Manager, Jo Foulkes, on the judging panel of the Façade Awards. Jo was invited to join a selected panel of experts and had the tremendously difficult job of shortlisting projects and selecting category winners from an unprecedented number of entries – in fact the ‘best new build project’ had to be split into three categories – commercial, domestic and education such was the quantity and strength of the entries received. Jo and the other judges certainly had their work cut out, but what a great event it was hearing about the fantastic work across the facades sector.